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Vertavo Quartet

If, as seems likely, this was the first of Beethoven's string quartets to be composed, it certainly finds him determined to stamp his personality on the music from the very outset - indeed, none of his quartets begins more arrestingly than this one: two long unaccompanied notes on the violin, arching upwards to form a melodic interval just a whole-tone short of an octave. Is this the start of a mysterious slow introduction; and if so, what is the music's key? Only with the entry of the remaining players in the third bar does it become clear that what we are hearing is the leisurely start of an ingratiating Allegro in D major. 

The fine slow movement - a study in contrasting sonorities and textures - is followed by a piece that lies midway between a minuet and a scherzo. Its heading is simply 'Allegro', and it its 'running' trio in the minor has a slightly old-fashioned feel to it; but the outer sections, with their dramatic off-beat accents and unexpected shifts of harmony, bring us near to the world of the genuine Beethovenian scherzo.

Behind the dazzling 'presto' finale lurks the rhythm of the tarantella. Beethoven invoked the same swirling rhythm in the finale of his Kreutzer Sonata Op.47, and the Piano Sonata Op.31 No.3; and these were all pieces that left a deep impression on Schubert, who based the concluding movement of his Death and the Maiden Quartet on a similar premise. But unlike Schubert's, Beethoven's piece comes to a close with a joke worthy of Haydn: there is no ending at all, properly speaking - just a reiterated fragment of the main theme, followed by a pause which leaves the players with their bows poised in the air, and their listeners on the edge of their seats.

©Misha Donat

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